These were drastic measures, and Azcopil alone might have met with strong opposition, or worse. But he had made old Nohul Voh his Prime Minister, and the people were in superstitious awe of the sorcerer. They feared him and his mysterious powers, next to the gods themselves, and the old fellow took full advantage of his authority. He had ever been an enemy of Kinchi Haman. Being of the House of Cocome Voh, and of the Titul Zius clan, he was preëminently, by descent, by tradition and by faith of the cult of the Plumed Serpent, and he regarded Kinich Ahau as a secondary lesser deity--indeed as scarcely a deity at all. As he had told me, Mictolan had been originally dedicated to Kukulcan; for generations its tutelar deity was the Plumed Serpent, and not until Kinchi Haman rose to power, by his own machinations and ruthless acts, had the Sun God been raised to prominence. And finally, to be revered as the Supreme God. From the beginning I had suspected that Nohul Voh’s underlying purpose had been to restore the old order of things, and now that Kinchi Haman had met his deserved end, now that the legitimate king ruled over the valley, and now that the old sorcerer found himself the right hand man of the king, he asserted himself. He had thundered at the people, had related the prophecies, had declared that my coming had been to reestablish the supremacy of Kukulcan, that the death of the hunchback priest had been his punishment at the hands of the Plumed Serpent. He had assured the people that I had destroyed the Monster of Sacrifices, that Kinchi Haman had hoodwinked and deceived them, that while posing as a priest of the Sun God he had secretly offered sacrifices to the false gods of people who had occupied the valley before the coming of the Mayas, and he had ended by foretelling the most dire calamities and most awful results to all, if the people failed to obey their new king. As Itza told of this I began to feel that I had become hopelessly entangled in the net of circumstances that I had helped to weave. I had become, willy-nilly, the high-priest of Kukulcan. The only other devotees of the Plumed Serpent god were the acolytes and lay-brothers--if I may use the term--of the temple, and if Kukulcan was to be _the_ god of the people, they would naturally expect to have the ceremonies continued with pomp and regularity. And I had no desire and no intention of devoting my life to acting as a Mayan high priest. Within a few days I planned to leave the valley--if Itza were willing--and I began to wonder if I would not meet with opposition on the part of Azcopil and Nohul Voh. * * * * *